


hold onto the ghost of my body

by milf_enthusiast



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: M/M, The Iliad, goo goo ga ga hyperfixation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24268486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milf_enthusiast/pseuds/milf_enthusiast
Summary: in a world where they do not matter,   they matter to each other
Relationships: Achilles/Patroclus of Opus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36





	hold onto the ghost of my body

**Author's Note:**

> hi i did not like song of achilles i am anti blond people

“Come back to me,” Achilles would say to me before I left for battle. Days, weeks at a time, I would be gone in the meaningless No-Man’s expansion of barren land between our camp and the gates of Troy. No matter, it never felt like more than a few minutes. Battle was a hazy headrush of blood, skin, and screams. Did I kill three or three hundred men in a day? Did it mean anything at all? 

No. Of course, it didn’t. I knew it. More senseless slaughter to please the gods above. More needless puppeteering to entertain our gracious saviors. The blood we spilled could fill every ocean, and the world would continue to spin. The sun would continue to rise every day and set every night. 

Achilles was no longer by my side to ease my treacherous thoughts. The greatest hero of Achaea had holed himself up in his tent, sulking over the loss of his war-bride and stewing in hatred for our commanding officer. However many nights the battles raged, I fell asleep in Trojan dirt, alone and caked in blood.

 _Come back to me._ Every time Achilles would sit up in his bedroll, burn his fingernails into my arm, and speak those words, I wanted to follow through on his request less and less.

Yet every time, it ached more and more to be apart from him.

I don’t know how many days of battle had passed when I found myself trudging into the Achaean camp once again. The heinous afternoon sun obscured my vision. Each fiber of my body burned with the blood of Trojan men. I needed to collapse into the arms of a specific Ptithian prince.

I lifted the flap to the tent spun of Ptithian textiles. Achilles lay where I saw him last, sprawled motionless on the thin camp mattress with his freckled back to me. 

“Achilles,” I said.

He jolted awake, twisting on the bedroll to look up at me. Achilles smiled. “You are truly a man of your word, my Patroclus,”

His voice. I wanted to wrap myself in the sound of it.

I managed to smile back.

He rose to his feet, colliding his lips to mine with more force than I’d felt from any Trojan brute’s weapon. I made a pained noise in my throat, prompting Achilles to breathe little apologies against my skin.

We didn’t break contact as Achilles pulled me down to the bedroll. “Patroclus,” he kept saying. “Patroclus.” Was relief supposed to hurt, I wondered to myself as Achilles unclothed me, tossing my bruised armor to the side of the mattress.

Achilles gently rolled me over onto my stomach and began to rub his palms against the tensions in my back. It was so good to just _feel_ him again. To hear him breathe. I fell into a deep, much-needed sleep as Achilles kneaded his hands into my skin, muttering my name.

I don’t know how much time had passed when I awoke. Gray, dim light filtered through the cloth walls. Had it been an hour or a full day? Did it mean anything at all? 

No. Of course, it didn’t. The passage of time meant nothing at war. The only numbers that held any significance in that hellscape were body count and plethrons of land gained.

I shifted in bed, registering my surroundings. I felt familiar fingers landing on my forehead. 

“Hey,” Achilles said softly. The cold light made his copper hair appear a dingy bronze.

“Hey.” I echoed. Achilles raked his hand through my hair. He knew I liked how it felt.

“You were especially tense yesterday,” he noted. “I expect nothing less than a hellish battle with that incompetent bastard as your leader.” Achilles could never help himself from badmouthing Agamemnon those days. His petty griping usually irritated me; at that moment it brought a smile to my face. 

“Mm,” I brought my arms around his waist and grappled to get closer to him. “I miss you.” 

Achilles played with the hair at the nape of my neck. “I missed you, too. My thanks for not getting killed, might I mention.” 

I curled up in the arc of his torso, not wanting to think about battle. This wretched war had been dragging on beyond my comprehension. I no longer functioned in cycles of Helios or the progression of days. My calendar had morphed into _Achilles, battle, Achilles, battle, Achilles, battle. Battle. Battle._

I hated it. How much longer would this continue? My destiny had fused itself to that of Achilles when the conflict began. I was going to die in Troy. 

I silently begged Thanatos to bless me with his icy grip. 

“It was difficult to be calm when you were far,” Achilles said, sliding his hand between my thighs. I exhaled shakily at his touch, shivering as he brought his lips to my neck. “I knew it was unnecessary to worry about you. You are the most reliable soldier I’ve ever fought alongside with. You are always there, right there for me to count on.”

The steadiness of his strokes was the most constant thing I’d experienced since the war began. Achilles kissed my neck, jaw, forehead, mouth. Nothing was blurred. Nothing felt vague. I was present, awake.

“You are all I care for,” I murmured as I caught the corner of his mouth between my lips. “You are real.” 

I savored that ethereal sensation of his skin pressed to mine. The painfully short sequences of our bodies entangling in one other were next to holy. Immaculacy was a friend to me whenever I laid with Achilles. 

I ended up with my head on Achilles’ chest, agonized to return to the reality outside of him I was being forced to live.

“What would our lives be like without those monsters on Olympos… or, wherever they go to watch us kill each other for their sport.” I spoke quietly, but I heard the bitterness seep from my words.

Achilles traced the bruises my armor had left on my shoulders. “I would have left Ptithia. You and I,” The vibrations of his voice echoed from his chest where I laid. “I doubt I was all that fit to be a king, after all. I never cared for responsibility. We would have run into the countryside, into unmarked territory without any order or hierarchy.”

Anarchy always seemed like a sort of bliss to us. We’d lived our whole lives without any real type of freedom; there always had to be something chaining the two of us down. If chaos meant never having to answer to destiny, chaos must be Elysium.

“We could have farmed a little plot of land.” Achilles went on, becoming wistful. “Hunted for meat and not have to burn any of it for the very orchestrators of our misery. You wouldn’t have had to shed a single drop of blood. We would have grown ancient together, died together, on our own terms. No spear to the gut or blood-soaked ground. 

“I remember when we were kids and _wine_ made you seize up. It reminded you of blood.” Achilles reminisced. 

Manslaughter was simpler than war. Manslaughter did not require me to deem my victim subhuman. It did not force me to look upon him as a creature I must destroy, a notch in my sheath. Manslaughter shed blood that stained my conscience. War shed blood that stained my skin and nothing deeper. 

I almost _wanted_ the trauma to return, that horror that I had taken a life with my own mortal hands. To be desensitized to killing was too unnatural. I hated my nonchalance with the fact that I, Patroclus, was a murderer. Why couldn’t I bring myself to care?

“Blood _should_ scare me,” I muttered. “It doesn’t anymore. I don’t think death even scares me anymore.”

Achilles’ body softened beneath me. I hadn’t even noticed all the stress knotted in his skin. “I wasn’t scared to die, I knew I’m meant to die here. I accepted it ages ago.” 

He spoke in past-tense. Achilles had considered himself dead for a very long time, and I had known it. We were both aware of our dispensability, but Achilles’ had been spelled out for him his whole existence. He had come to this war to die, and when I followed him, so had I.

“Oh, but Patroclus,” Relief, almost _optimism_ spotted Achilles’s voice. “When you and I are dead… we’ll be done with all this. We can rest.”

My whole body ached. “If only that were true, Achilles. When we are dead, where will we be going? Another realm of gods. Yet there is no way to escape the next one. Gods gave us life, they will give us our deaths, and even in the afterlife, they will control us.”

Achilles suddenly shot up in bed, aggressively taking my face in his hands and pressing his forehead to mine. “How can you say that,” his voice was choked, his eyes squeezed shut. “No god gave me life. Gods gifted me with pain, with a deadline, with a definite future. That’s not life, Patroclus. You are.”

I brought my hands to his neck. I felt him lean into me harder.

“You gave me life. You are the reason I will be able to die knowing I had more than enough.” Achilles said to me. “I want to kiss you until my lips ache so that you have to kiss them all better. I want to memorize every inch of your body so that I never forget it, not even as I lay dying.”

He kissed my mouth over and over, each kiss harder than the last as if he were attempting to suck my body dry of sorrow.

“You are all I want to remember about this earth,” I smiled through my words. “Thank you for my life, Achilles. My good, trustworthy friend.”

He breathed a laugh at that last part. “My good, faithful companion Patroclus.”

“I love you, Achilles,” Ethereal.

“I love you, Patroclus.” Immaculate. 

I was not angry as I laid in Trojan dirt, caked in the blood that poured from my own gut, alone, about to fall asleep for the last time. I did not scream. I did not protest. I did not curse Hector or any one of the gods. I would see Achilles again. I would come back to him. He’d come back to me. The world would be okay without us.

Next to holy.

Morning came, and the sun rose once again.

  
  
  



End file.
